Ouroboros
by kingly queen
Summary: At night Sarah dreams, and dreams again. This is the story that never ends.


**Ouroboros**  
><em>KINGLY QUEEN<br>_

Disclaimer: Labyrinth does not belong to me. I do not, in any way, make a profit from this story.

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><p>At night, Sarah dreamed.<p>

"_Fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your _slave._"_

She dreamed of dreams that smelled of peaches and petrichor upon waking. When she woke she recounted the slopes and curves of dark, familiar words. They came quietly, easily. When she breathed, she inhaled the ice of their sound, and was cut by the pale sliver of pleading that she had missed before. Many mornings she laid in bed, turning the words around in her mind, running her hands over their familiar shapes.

They were sad and lovely.

When she woke, she found life in the waking world hollow. Sarah went through the motions of living and breathing. This skin was not hers; these clothes were not hers, the words formed by her lips, even they were not hers. But she went through the motions of living and breathing, and she did it well.

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><p>Sarah sat by the window in her Anthropology class. Outside, two larks dove and spun towards each other, an aerial performance. Their wings skimmed the empty air and they moved as if weightless, hopping from one branch to the next, never once touching. An endless, circle of a dance. She wondered how it would have culminated if a buffet of a wing, much larger than theirs, hadn't sent them careening towards the ground. Sarah blinked in surprise, and a yellow set of eyes blinked back.<p>

A snowy white owl peered at her through the window.

Her heartbeat quickened as they locked gaze. Its eyes are familiar, gold. She has seen the spread of its wings before, unfolded atop the arch of a brow. For a minute, reality transcends the dream and yet…

Sarah blinked, and in a flurry of feathers, the magnificent creature flaps away. It is an owl, nothing more.

Time dragged on. Sarah dreamed on.

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><p>Then, there are times when she was unsure where the dreams ended and where reality began. Times when she had gotten lost, turning a corner on a busy street and then was suddenly standing in a meadow of greens and golds, soft butterfly wings fluttering lazily all around her, as if they were just only rousing from a long, deep sleep. Moments when she woke to the sensation of fingers brushing through her hair (<em>oh so gently<em>) only to find herself alone. Utterly.

But though she dreamed, life did not pass her by. She continued to seize opportunities where she could find them, and soon Sarah had the lead in an upcoming play. It was about a girl (_cruel_) and a king (_terrible_). Her lips formed the words, and they tasted like blackberries on her tongue. Sarah struggled to remember why.

Holding a familiar red book (_why it is familiar, she cannot remember_) she rehearsed before a mirror, barely glancing at the lines, watching the person's face before her. She half expected the surface of the mirror to blur and distort, like falling rain on pond water.

"Through dangers untold, and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle, beyond the Goblin city – to take back the child that you have stolen." Sarah's chin rose, prideful and strong. Her eyes burned. "For my will is as strong as yours and my kingdom as great."

Once more a hairline fracture seemed to spread across her world, her perceptions. As she gazed at her reflection, she found her cheeks were flushed, her eyes a vivid, forest green. Her chest heaved with some heretofore unknown pressure. Or perhaps of pressure relieved. Perhaps she had never really known to breathe since now, or had forgotten.

Forgotten.

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><p>"We're lost."<p>

Someone heaved a sigh, which served to voice their agreement.

"_Really_ lost."

"Where's this cottage of yours supposed to be, anyway?"

The conversation only spirals downward from there, but Sarah could hardly bring herself to care. Or worry. The world was beautiful, and the leaves were still dew damp from last night's rain. Sarah spied a fat blue caterpillar. "Maybe we can ask this little fella," Sarah said musingly as she leaned down toward it, bending at the waist.

Her friends exchanged looks, and fidgeted in tandem. Quiet hung in the air.

Sarah straightend, and with a smile, confidently marched onward. "I think we should go left. When in doubt, go left."

Wrong footed and unsure, they followed.

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><p>Sarah forgot how to breathe again. But this time, for no more reason than the fact that she <em>couldn't<em>.

One minute she was standing on the deck of the cottage overlooking the lake, and then in the next moment, she wasn't. There was not enough time between the fall and the cold, wet landing to scream for help.

Sarah can taste the brackish lake water invading her mouth, flooding her lungs like cold leaden weights. Coils of underwater reeds tangled around her ankles, pulling her deeper and deeper into the belly of the lake. Fighting was futile. Hoping was fruitless.

The only thing she thought is that, surely, death couldn't be _this_ anticlimactic.

It isn't.

Strong arms hauled her up and out of the water, tearing her away from the entrapping reeds. She was pulled onto dry, solid land and, desperately she fought for breath, for life. Suddenly, warm lips pressed to hers, and _pushed_. Pushed air into her lungs, forcing her to live and to breathe. She turned away and coughed up the water in her chest.

When her eyes blinked open, Sarah found she was not under the burning afternoon sun of the cottage countryside, but in the sleepy purple dusk in another place, another time. Willow trees swayed around her. The lake (_a different one_) gleamed gold at her feet. Sarah propped herself on her elbows dazedly when a voice cut through the ambiance of chirruping crickets.

"Silly precious. I have no time to be teaching babies how to breathe."

Sarah froze.

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><p>When Sarah was a child, her parents had a house on the very fringes of a forest, in which she had loved to explore. In its depths was either a small lake or a very big pond. In the summer, she would sit by its edges, submerging her feet in its waters, watching and waiting for tadpoles to make mischief between her toes.<p>

In the winter she could venture out onto the middle of the lake's surface, when it froze.

There was a day when she tread out onto the center of the lake, her little skates marring its perfect surface, that she felt the ice splinter beneath her feet.

At first it had been a hairline fracture. Barely visible, completely inaudible, but she felt it beneath her feet. When she had edged toward the safety of solid ground, it grew. Streaking outwards, into sharp little shards protruded from where she stood. Her breath came in sharp little gasps, and she could see her fear in the ghostly white vapor that expelled from her mouth each time she exhaled. Then, the ice shattered from under her feet, plunging her into the icy cold depths of the lake.

It was not unlike the feeling that the sound of his voice evoked.

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><p>Sarah's spine snapped straight with a sudden jolt. As she spun around she came face to face with a crystalline gaze, protected by a wall of ice. Her eyes followed the line of his eyes, to the arch of his brows, down to the elegant slope of his nose, to the dip of his thin lips, half quirked in a smirk that was no parts happiness, and all parts dark amusement. Her gaze was caught by the sharp angles of his face, which had, against all odds, aligned into a face she found familiar. Terrifying.<p>

Beautiful.

_Why _did his face seem to make her feel so lost? So found? Sarah could see a raven haired girl lurking in the dark of his eyes, her face young, bold and defiant.

She bit her lip, her eyes upon him in open scrutiny. "I think," she began hesitantly "that I might know you." But from where? How?

She watched him undergo a subtle transformation. Some strange tension seemed to seep away from his body as his stance relaxed. The hard lines of his mouth gentled, and fluttered, as if they were small birds in flight that didn't quite know how to settle, but they dipped into a small smirk. Last of all were his eyes. A minute softening, though not so far as gentle. It was as if he were laying down arms.

Her eyes were on his lips when in deep measured tones, he said, "Hello Sarah." He moved closer, treading a careful circle around her. An intricate dance. Sarah thought of the larks.

In what must have been a trick of the light, his palms revealed a crystal, and in it were the reflected colors of the dusk enveloping them, and the golden lake lapping away at the shore. But even deeper in the crystal's center, she could see a girl, with stars in her hair.

"I've brought you a gift," he said, his voice a smooth baritone. They slipped smoothly from his tongue, as if he had said them before, and again. Around and around the crystal went, twirling through and between his fingers until he closed the distance between them in one swift stride. The fey creature unfurled his fingers and the crystal orb sat in the middle of his palm, opalescent and tempting.

Sarah licked her lips, her eyes darting from the crystal to his face, entranced. "What is it?"

"It's a crystal, nothing more." Nothing more. "But if you turn it this way and look into it, it will show you your dreams." His words rang sharply in her ears, as if they were the tolling of an iron bell in the distance. Ringing a warning.

Where she had known him before didn't matter now. But she _did_ know him, just as well as she was sure she knew these words. Ones that would wind around her like chains and shackles if she gave them half a chance. Sarah grit her teeth against their sound, no less enchanting but ringing false.

She turned away from the mesmerizing colors that swirled and hazed in tandem within the crystal. They would make a ghost of her. Dreams couldn't be given, only achieved. Sarah looked up and met his eyes, resolute. "I know what my dreams are."

Time seemed to freeze suddenly. To fracture. To splinter all around them, pieces of it raining out of the sky and onto their heads (_like the rubble of a crumbling castle_).

His face was hard, thunderous like a storm at sea. His hands, holding her dreams, fisted suddenly, and the crystal went to glistening ash, crumbling in the iron of his fingers. Dimly, Sarah was aware of the turbulence of the golden lake, now a dark murky grey. It was no longer content to lap lazily at the shore. The violent waters raced around them to shore, dragging shrubs and rocks and hapless creatures down in its depths. The sky darkened, as if shaded by his anger and her refusal.

"Don't defy me, Sarah. I offer you your _dreams_, and you refuse?" he demanded, prowling around her, his gaze colder than ice. Sarah wrapped her arms around herself, a feeble defense against his power, but her eyes burned hotly as she met his gaze.

"You cannot give me what is mine, King of Dreams." She unwound her arms from around herself, eyes blazing, as she rose to her full height. There was no fear. She had won this battle once before. She could do it again.

He seemed to sense it. "Sarah," he said coaxingly, though she didn't miss the desperation shading his voice. "Fear me, love me, do as I say and I would be your _slave_."

He was beautiful. In her heart of hearts, Sarah knew it. He was wild, and smelled of pale grey mornings and petrichor. It would be _so_ easy to fall. So easy to crumble. To let her just have him, and let him have her.

But she couldn't.

Smiling sadly, she shook her head, and said the right words. "You have no power over me."

And the world fell down.

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><p>Sarah woke to the sound of his voice in her ear, a crooning string of promises, kept and unkept. It echoed like thunder in the dark and deep recesses of her mind, along with the rest of the secrets she'd locked away from herself.<p>

Lying in bed, she gazed out the open window, and at the light of the morning spilling into her room, setting it afire with illumination. The curtain of night receded in the face of the sun, and her dreams ebbed away into only a hazy remembrance of feelings and colors, the way that dreams so often do.

Come morning, there was a life to live. People to love, things to do, goals to accomplish.

But at night, Sarah dreamed.

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><p>"<em>Fear me, love me, do as I say and I would be your <em>slave."

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><p><strong>Fin<strong>


End file.
